Midnight Plums
by WolfHeartedWarrior
Summary: She is here, and he is not, and somehow she will have to find her own way to break the waiting silence. And he wonders if they can keep on pretending in the silence that has broken both of their hearts.
1. Silence Songs

**A/N: This is the first time I've written anything about the twins or Angelina, so it should be fun. Gotta love plot bunnies, right? Rated M for potential action later. Enjoy the story, and leave me a little magic if you've something you want to share, constructive criticism or praise! If not, enjoy. ;)**

**Disclaimer: These are not my toys, and I don't own them, as much as I wish I did. All characters belong to J.K. Rowling, though the plot is mine completely.**

* * *

The house sounds hollow, like the last dregs of water have drained out of a stream, and she thinks it is beautiful.

Silence is her constant companion, the best gift she will ever receive because it reminds her of him, of the moments when he let his all-too-human magic envelope her heart. It also keeps the pain still and slow, molasses in the frozen air, and lets her brokenly function around the memories that rise with the noise level, because the only noise she wants to hear now is him.

Her hands brush against the jagged, broken keys, fingers trying to coax a melody from the silky ivory and kissing battered, river-smooth ebony lovingly. His hands had touched these keys, had made them sing, and silence would fall as the muscles of his throat thickened and swelled with song. Even now, she can almost see him standing there with her, waiting for her to notice him, waiting for the first note, a chord shimmering as it hangs in the warming air...

But she is here, and he is not, and somehow she will have to find her own way to break the waiting silence.

It was almost golden, the stillness that hovered between the last notes of the piano and the exhalation of that first breath, like stage lights highlighting him in a darkened room. Somehow it made him golden too, her golden boy, though only in the summer when he played Quidditch in the old apple grove was he _actually_ golden, laughing and hauling her up on the broom with him. She remembers the almost-kiss they shared, when she growled at him in mock fear and he laughed in delight, his breath warm on her lips, missing by only a second as he wrapped an arm tighter around her waist, holding her close…

Her hands sweep across the keys of the piano, fingernails tearing as she fights to rip them away, to end this agony. Quite probably the piano is screaming, but there is no sound, no air in this magic-forsaken room, nothing to hold her here.

Fred is gone, and she remains, and it will always be silent in her heart.

There will be no more kisses stolen on the Quidditch pitch in the rain, no more sparkling summer nights. There will be no more jokes, no more pranks; it is an intolerable loss, this vicious absence. She knows that the only one who could mourn him this much is the other half of his own soul, and she wonders how much longer George can last, bleeding out like this, like she is.

She doesn't acknowledge anyone but George anymore, and she wonders if they can keep on pretending in the silence that has broken both of their hearts.


	2. Endless Permutations

**A/N: A little magic goes a long way, so write me up if there's something you love or something I need to change!**

**Disclaimer: Still not my characters (unfortunately!), though I can pretend for a little while, right?**

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There are no mirrors in George's flat, not after the war.

He _can't_ look in mirrors anymore, not when all he sees is his best friend, his other half, gazing heartbrokenly out at him from behind the thick sheet of glass, imprisoned in a world from which there is no escape.

He used to keep a hand mirror for guests, but he's broken that, too, multiple times, when he catches a glimpse of Fred's world in it. Almost no one visits him anyhow, so it's not even like there's anyone there to notice the bin full of silvered slivers and glittering dust creating and trapping the endless permutations of Fred in their very beings.

He doesn't know how to go on without his shadow, and despair crushes him as he stands at the sink in the bathroom, brushing his hair back without looking at the gaping mirror frame studded with glass shards that stands in front of him. Fred is looking out of those shards, and George can see glimpses of his red, red hair and his once-bright eyes, now clouded and dulled with loss, out of the corners of his own eyes. It's almost as though Fred is waiting there for George to notice him, waiting for George to free him from the sameness of the days that have passed, but George knows that can never happen, so he doesn't look, not if he doesn't have to.

It's the quiet that gets to him the most, though. There is an emptiness that yawns, cavernous, through the flat in Fred's absence. There are no explosions, no shared laughs, none of the singing that has (_had_, he reminds himself dully, I have to remember that it's _had_ now) become their own secret and guilty pleasure. There is no Angelina with her clever fingers to play the piano as they sing together, to harmonize and learn the songs Fred's fingers could summon forth from the eager keys.

It is just him here, alone, the lesser half of a single soul, and he is lost. Fred is gone, and George is not, and somehow he will have to find his own way to break the waiting silence.

Silence might be golden, as they say, but it's slowly killing him, bleeding him dry, and he knows that there's no good way to keep pretending in this bitter silence that festers in his heart.

"Fred… why not me?" he murmurs, scarred hands gripping the sink tightly, knuckles whitening, wincing as his own voice, the only legacy that Fred has left him, skitters painfully off of the pale tile.

He can almost imagine his twin's sardonic grin, hear his manic laugh, and knows that the world is a poorer place for losing the best Weasley it ever had, knows that he is losing hold of reality because he can almost _hear_ Fred's voice telling him that of course George has to live, because he couldn't very well die and take out _both_ of the best Weasleys, now, could he?

He knows he's supposed to smile, that he would if Fred were really here, if he'd really said those words, but the problem is that he _isn't_ here and he _didn't _say it, and George doesn't know how to live in the silence that Fred has left him.

There's nothing where his heart should be, and he doesn't know how much longer he can keep on pretending that one day he'll be able to breathe again.


	3. A Distinct Lack of Light

**A/N: Any references that I have made will be credited in the next chapter (or perhaps the next chapter for the relevant character). Thanks also to Aurora West for her welcome input, because it's impossible to know what is good/bad without it (and she's also my first review ever!).**

**Disclaimer: You all know what goes here. Today I'm just pretending to be Rowling, but I know that (sigh) I'll have to return everything, and that I never owned it.**

* * *

He is static as she sketches him, still, and somehow precious under her hands for that stillness. There is no hint of a laugh on his face, only a soft wonder as his fingers press the strings to the frets of her guitar, his gold-shot copper hair hiding his eyes while his head is bowed over the slender neck and his arm curled around its sleek body, caught in a moment of curiosity and drawn from memory.

She can hear the guitar strumming as she fights with the end of her essay (a horrible sixteen inch long thing about the defining characteristics of wolfsbane versus monkshood and asphodel, and the dubious nature of their origins); she winces as a wrong note sticks out, jagged and raw, and laughs as George moves Fred's fingers to the right frets, remembering her brief lesson. Fred swears at him in a low, pleasant voice that sends shivers up her spine, and she might be fourteen but she knows they are meant to be together, that they will burn bright and long and hard, the way stars do. They will light up the night sky and put the moon to shame, and it will be beautiful.

It's dark, now, though, at twenty one. There is a distinct lack of light, of heat in her world, and she is left with just the cool embrace of night—dark velvet, and glittering, sharp-edged diamonds in the sky above her where once there were hopes and dreams, disguised as stars.

_There_, and she's pinned the curve of his wrist, the loose kiss of his fingers on the pick and the angles of his strong arms in charcoal on the parchment, never to be lost, never forgotten, always to burn as bright and fast and hard now as they do in her memory for everyone else who cares to look. She wishes she could show it to _him_, let him see himself through her eyes. He'd come up behind her and look over her shoulder and see the lyrics she scribes in every line of him, because that's what he is to her, pure joy and music.

He used to hold her like that when they sang, arms wrapped loosely around her shoulders, his breath a whisper on her neck, lips murmuring against her skin in the spaces between their scripted words, sunlight spilling like water through the shades and over their entangled hands. She can feel that moment there with him, her own hands moving to rest on her hipbones lightly, unsure of how to respond, eventually settling as she reaches behind her and hooks her right thumb into the pocket of his jeans, pulling him flush against her body...

She looks at the sketch with sightless eyes, unable to see him in the scattered lines she's drawn, though they are cohesive and true. It's an empty picture, devoid of life; there is no spirit, nothing in it that makes it _Fred_, just an empty scrawl that doesn't describe even the beginnings of him. It's an obituary, the last promise of him, and it's gone now, lacking, cold. His brightness aches in her soul, and she thinks that maybe she too is a star, dying, going gentle into that good night without a whimper of protest.

He is a supernova against the sky, and it has always only a matter of time until she hurt herself, because what star will she look to when she can't find her way in the darkness now? Lost and alone, and left in a world where music wounds her more surely than any of the slings or arrows of misfortune?

Fred's voice almost whispers in her ear:_ Let go_.

Somehow, suddenly, she is in free fall, and there's nothing she can do to stop spinning in place, to regain her bearings, and there is nothing left but a choice too horrible to make. Minutes (or maybe hours, because it's hard to tell when sound and light have lost their meaning) slide by unnoticed, and she is drowning, drifting in her hollow house, looking for any out from this devastating spiral...

She makes up her mind suddenly and pulls herself together, whirling into her cloak and grabbing up a wand that hasn't been used since she was so thoroughly blinded by the absence of him, leaving behind only the fragile sketch, the final delineation of a young man blurred out in spots by something that looks suspiciously like tears.


End file.
